


Brew Apart

by XtaticPearl



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Break Up, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-22
Updated: 2018-10-22
Packaged: 2019-08-05 21:43:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16375529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/XtaticPearl/pseuds/XtaticPearl
Summary: “I never stood a chance, did I?”(a Tumblr prompt that I let angst)





	Brew Apart

The lights were on in the kitchen and he could smell bacon as he strolled into view. Tony wasn’t the best at keeping schedules or meal-times but even he knew that 3 a.m was too early for breakfast. 

He was about to make a comment when his eyes registered Steve completely. Specifically, what he wore. 

“So,” the words slipped out of Tony’s mouth before he could rein them in, “did you say yes before you told me you won’t or after?”

Steve didn’t flinch, he had trained himself out of it over the years, but there were always signs of detachment when a bubble was burst. It was like being surrounded by a cold haze when this happened, the questioning of a false reality, and Tony knew better than to do it but wasn’t better than doing it anyway. 

“I haven’t put the coffee on yet, but -” Steve transferred the bacon onto the dish and moved to the cabinets, “ - now that you’re up -”

“Unfortunately?” Tony quipped, on a roll of bad mood now, loitering near the entrance of kitchen but not entering it. 

“You should check your wounds again today. Especially your back,” Steve rolled right over the question and pulled out the coffee jar calmly, methodical in his routine that was half-familiar now.

“I can take care of myself,” Tony reminded him, annoyed with the situation more than the reminder, hoping to get a reaction. 

Steve skipped a beat as he scooped out the coffee but continued with his task, still not looking up at Tony. 

“Clint will be -”

“Would you just - can you stop,” Tony entered the kitchen and stop across Steve, the counter separating them, and pressed his palms to the dark marble of his side, “If you’re leaving, could you at least look at me?”

The stealth suit had a card pocket hidden in the bicep of the left arm. _For emergencies_ , Tony had told Steve teasingly when he had first fitted him into it,  _maybe even condoms_. There was a tear-drop mole on the back of this man that Tony had traced the first time he had realized what this meant for him. The nails of Steve’s little toes were twisted for straight clippers. There were a million intimate details, a billion ghost touches that bound them but at that moment Tony could feel nothing but an endless void. They were two feet away and too far gone. 

“You were sleeping,” Steve said softly, too soft for the harsh blow hidden between the words, and Tony was adept at grasping for hidden meanings by now. 

“I wasn’t dreaming enough though,” Tony replied and they were speaking without saying what needed to be said. The band-aid was reeking of an infected wound but nobody wanted to rip it off yet. Or maybe both of them were hoping to have the other do it.

 _Would you have left without waking me?_  Tony wanted to ask.

 _Would I have let you go when the dream revealed itself as a nightmare?_ he didn’t want to say but still wondered. 

“I never stood a chance, did I?” the words rolled off his tongue like sour milk and Tony knew Steve well enough by now to sense the paused cringe, the controlled regret in his shoulders. They were good men, everyone said, good enough for the world. 

Not good enough for each other maybe. Or just not good enough to stick.

Steve looked up from the coffee pot, now brewing a new beginning in its freshness, and they met in gaze even as they were about to part. 

They weren’t anything in words or law, Tony knew, there was nothing to bind them or extend the moment. But they had been moments and chances, friends and all that came with it in shades. 

They had been and that was their story. 

“Thanks,” Tony said, an unasked acknowledgment of everything and nothing, moving around to take over the coffee pot. Steve stood beside him, silent and on the verge of something for a few seconds before a silent exhale.

“I’ll -”

 _Miss you_? Tony thought, filling in the words from the past when things had just meant a pause even in the end,  _come back?_

“I’ll let you know when it ends,” Steve said instead and for a minute Tony imagined that he was talking about this impasse rather than the mission. He had always imagined he impossible though and he wasn’t going to be fooled by that right now. He didn’t look up and simply hummed a reply, not wanting to know anything more than that. 

There wasn’t any movement for a brief pause and with a slight brush of fingers against Tony’s, Steve left. 

There would be shards to pick up when the morning set in properly but for that moment, Tony stood between the fading past and a new present. Just him and a brewing bitterness of age-old.

**Author's Note:**

> Is Steve really leaving? Is this just one half of the story? Will he come back? Who knows yet. Let's let our imagination play!


End file.
